FYI: An Interesting "See You at the Pole" Case

[Steven Jamar]

In my 30+ years of supporting the ACLU in general and local chapters  
of it, I would have to say that to claim they have been fully  
consistent on any particular narrow issue either in any given year or  
especially over time would be quite an overstatement of it.  But, in  
general, the ACLU really does work and has consistently, or even one  
could say constantly, worked to advance the cause of civil liberties,  
especially those of speech and religion.

Have they taken positions I think are wrong --  oh yeah.  And do they  
have righteous disagreements about what positions to take? -- oh  
yeah.  Are they monolithic?  Not at all.

One of the real curiousities to me is that so many people who claim  
to be for liberty and against government control are against the ACLU.

I recall in the days of Skokie that so many Jewish people I knew put  
the ACLU at the top of their s**t lists -- not seeing the importance  
of groups like the ACLU in protecting freedoms for some as protecting  
them for us all.

I think a lot of the dislike (and stronger) directed at the ACLU is  
misdirected or comes not from a sense of liberties being protected  
but much more from a sense of whose ox is being gored at the  
particular time.

Free speech is not, in the main, popular.

Steve


-- 
Prof. Steven D. Jamar                                     vox:   
202-806-8017
Howard University School of Law                           fax:   
202-806-8428
2900 Van Ness Street NW                             
mailto:stevenjamar at gmail.com
Washington, DC  20008           http://www.law.howard.edu/faculty/ 
pages/jamar

"Rarely do we find men who willingly engage in hard, solid thinking.  
There is an almost universal quest for easy answers and half-baked  
solutions. Nothing pains some people more than having to think."

- Martin Luther King Jr., "Strength to Love", 1963



-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.ucla.edu/pipermail/religionlaw/attachments/20051031/5b3110c0/attachment.html